Gallipoli Diary, Volume II | Page 7

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the physique and class of the 6th East Lancashires under Colonel Cole
Hamilton. Then mounted and rode to the Headquarters of General
Shaw, commanding the 13th (new) Division. Shaw was feeling his
wounds; he had already been once round his lines; so I would not let
him come again. But Colonel Gillivan, G.S.O.1, Major Hillyard,
G.S.O.2, Captain Jackson, G.S.O.3, Colonel Burton, A.A. and Q.M.G.,
joined us. First we went to the Headquarters of the 39th Brigade
commanded by Brigadier-General Cayley (the Brigade Major is
Captain Simpson). Then I went and looked at the trenches J.11-12-13,
where I met Colonel Palmer of the 9th Warwicks, Colonel Jordan,
D.S.O., of the 7th Gloucesters, Colonel Nunn of the 9th Worcesters,
Colonel Andrews of the 7th North Staffordshires. We tramped through
miles of trenches. The men were very fit and cheery. It was the day
when they were relieving one another by companies from the reserve
and there was a big crowd in the Ravine. De Lisle told me that one
week had made the most astonishing difference to the savvy of these
first arrivals of the New Army. At first there was confusion, loss of
energy and time; by the end of the week they had picked up the
wrinkles of the veterans. There was a good lot of shelling from the
Turks but, humanly speaking, we were all quite snug and safe in the big
gully or moving down the deep communication trenches. No one, not
even the new 13th Division, paid the smallest deference to the
projectiles.
Now began one of these semi-comic, semi-serious adventures which
seem to dog my footsteps. Just as I got into the little dinghy, two
bluejackets pulling and a Petty Officer steering, the Turks began to

shell H.M.S. Savage as she lay about a hundred yards out. She did not
like it, and, instead of waiting to let us get aboard, Commander Homer
thought it wiser to sheer off about half a mile. When she quitted the
Turks turned their guns on to our cockleshell, and although none of the
shot came near us they still came quite near enough to interest the
whole gallery of some thousands of bathing Tommies who, themselves
safe in the dead ground under the cliff, were hugely amused to see their
C.-in-C. having a hot time of it. After ten minutes hard rowing we got
close to the destroyer and she, making a big circle at fairly high speed,
came along fast as if she was going to run us down, with the idea of
baffling the aim of the enemy. Not a bad notion as far as the destroyer
was concerned but one demanding acrobatic qualities of a very high
order on the part of the Commander-in-Chief. Anyway just as she was
drawing abreast and I was standing up to make my spring a shell hit her
plump and burst in one of her coal bunkers, sending up a big cloud of
mixed smoke and black coal dust. The Commander was beside himself.
He waved us off furiously; cracked on full steam and again left us in
the lurch. We laughed till the tears ran down our cheeks. Soon, we had
reason to be more serious, not to say pensive. The Savage showed a
pair of clean heels this time and ran right away to Helles. So there we
were, marooned, half a mile out to sea, in a tiny dinghy on which the
Turks again switched their blarsted guns. The two bluejackets pulled
themselves purple. They were both of them fat reservists and the
mingling of anxiety and exertion, emotion and motion, made the sweat
pour in torrents down their cheeks. Each time a shell plunked into the
water we brightened up; then, gradually, until the next one splashed,
our faces grew longer and longer. At last we got so far away that the
Turks gave us up in disgust. How much I should like to see that battery
commander's diary. Altogether, by the time we had boarded the Savage,
we had been in that cursed little dinghy for just exactly one hour, of
which I should think we were being gently shelled for three quarters of
an hour. On board the destroyer no harm to speak of: only one man
wounded.
Cast anchor at Imbros at 9 p.m. General Legge and Captain H. Lloyd
came over to stay the night. Mail from England.

Have cabled again to stir them up about the hospital ships.
18th July, 1915. Church Parade. Inspected troops. Wrote in camp all
the afternoon. Walked out to the lighthouse in the evening and watched
the shells bursting over Gully Beach where we were yesterday. How
often have I felt anxious seeing these shrapnel through the telescope.
On the spot, as I know from yesterday's experience,